Or an ugly loss at Wrigley.
On Monday, in the fourth inning of their series opener against the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants right fielder Luis Matos stepped into the batter’s box against Matthew Boyd. There were two outs and Matt Chapman stood on second base, with the Giants trailing 2-0.
Matos stood and watched idly as four fastsballs flew out of Boyd’s hand and landed in Carson Kelly’s mitt. The first landed in the zone. The next three didn’t. On the fifth pitch, Matos finally felt timed to Boyd’s fastball, and proceeded to swing straight through a perfectly-timed changeup. On the sixth pitch, Matos felt timed to Boyd’s changeup, got a second one, and launched it well into the bleachers.
Anyway, I hope you all had a nice Monday evening. See you tomorrow!
Okay, fine. We can talk about the rest of the baseball game, even though there’s nothing fun to talk about beyond that Matos home run. So let’s talk about that Matos home run a little more. Suddenly, the Giants fourth outfielder looks mighty comfortable again. Over the last three games, he’s 4-11 with two homers, one double, two walks, and two strikeouts.
Interestingly, Matos has been crushing right-handed pitchers this year, but has been struggling against lefties, though the sample size is so small that it comes with a surgeon general’s warning. So seeing him have not just a third straight strong game, but a gorgeous swing off a southpaw was a gorgeous sight.
And, not to belabor the point, but uhh … kind of the only gorgeous sight that the Giants provided on Monday.
For the Giants, Monday was a loss. A rather lopsided loss. A 9-2 loss, if you’re demanding the specifics. And frankly, it was just a bad day at the office that can be easily and quickly washed away with a trip to Portillo’s, or whatever their go-to Italian beef joint is.
But it was also a reminder that good baseball teams are hard to beat. The Giants just cruised to a four-game series win over the Colorado Rockies but, if we’re being honest, it wasn’t their best baseball. There were times during the season where it felt like what they were doing only worked because of who they were playing. The Rockies were going to counter the Giants mistakes not with capitalization, but with return favors.
The Cubs are a good team, and so they wouldn’t. The Giants weren’t sharp, and they paid the price. The Cubs pounced on every mistake the Giants offered up: pitchers who couldn’t find the strike zone, infielders who couldn’t find the web of the glove, hitters who couldn’t move the runner over.
Against teams like the Cubs, the margin for error is often nonexistent. In the bottom of the fourth inning, minutes after Matos had tied the game, Landen Roupp opened the frame with back-to-back strikeouts, then got Pete Crow-Armstrong to hit a groundball to reigning Gold Glove winner Matt Chapman.
Chapman booted it, which gave Chicago all the light they needed. Crow-Armstrong reached safely on the error and, after back-to-back singles bookending a stolen base, the Cubs had scored a pair of runs.
But the sixth inning was where this was really on display. Still in it, down just 4-2, the wheels fell off. Hayden Birdson replaced Roupp, and gave up a leadoff home run to Carson Kelly, who apparently is the best hitter in baseball history now. Perhaps rattled or perhaps just facing a great player, Birdsong then got stuck in a long battle with Crow-Armstrong, which ended in a single.
So it goes. That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was that, finally facing the soft part of the lineup, Birdsong got Nico Hoerner to ground into a tailor-made double play, but a Willy Adames error resulted in two safe runners instead of two outs. Birdsong reprised the role when he got Dansby Swanson to hit a left-side grounder, but Chapman booted another one. Instead of the inning being over, the bases were loaded with no outs.
It’s probable to overcome those mistakes against the Rockies, and possible to overcome them against an average team. But it won’t happen against the best offense in the Majors.
Birdsong walked the next batter, Nicky Lopez, which scored a run. He limited Ian Happ — who had homered earlier in the game — to a sacrifice fly, which scored another run. He walked Kyle Tucker to load the bases. He handed the ball to Bob Melvin, who handed the ball to Spencer Bivens, who give up a single to Seiya Suzuki, which scored two runs. He walked Michael Busch, which loaded the bases.
And then Kelly, who started the whole party, hit a groundball to Chapman. At long, merciful last, the Giants turned the double play.
It wasn’t a red flag or a concerning loss. The Giants self-proclaimed best defensive left side infield in baseball — a perfectly fair claim — committed four errors, and there’s no way to view that as anything but a funky aberration or a secret agent groundskeeper. They had limited offensive opportunities and failed to capitalize on them, and that’s hardly cause for concern with a team that’s been fantastic in scoring situations this year.
It’s just a loss. A bad loss. An ugly loss. A loss that you didn’t enjoy watching, save for that 20-second moment where Matos swung and then rounded the bases while Jon Miller serenaded you. And certainly a loss that served as a strong reminder that even good teams — and the Giants are a good team — cannot mess around and expect victory against other good teams.
Something tells me they won’t make that mistake tomorrow.